dwheeler

87 ms·

901.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Agreed. SMS is not encrypted end to end. We don't need another protocol like RCS that is not end to end encrypted... that is the basic minimum today.
902.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I hope it's satire. Anyone who thinks that paperless voting machines are acceptable for non-trivial elections should first see https://www.xkcd.com/2030/ , and then look at https://www.verifiedvoting.o
903.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I just tried this on Python3 on a 64-bit x86 system: import math x = 0.49999999999999994 print(x-0.5) print(math.floor(x+0.5)) I got these printouts: -5.551115123125783e-17 1 So yes, something less than 1&#
904.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I don't know what they are doing currently , but the article from a few years ago said, "We run them on stock Linux images deployed to AWS. We use SBCL for production deployment and CCL on most of the developers’ machines."
905.
by dwheeler 7y ago
RSS can be used for more than traditional blogs, too. The CII Best Practices badge has a "projects" page that lists all projects working on or achieving a badge: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/project
906.
by dwheeler 7y ago
> My absolutely minimum is that every citizen should be able to confirm how their vote was recorded after the fact. The downside of that is that such systems generally enable bought votes and extorted votes.
907.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Nothing about open source prohibits professional support. Indeed, a lot of companies make money providing professional support of Open Source software. If you want paid support for OSS, then go look for it... you will often find it.
908.
by dwheeler 7y ago
In general the ancient Romans were more interested in mathematical application, instead of abstraction. I think that's true for many other ancient civilizations as well. It's not true that the Romans didn't understand mathema
909.
by dwheeler 7y ago
My point is not that paper never hurts. My point is that paper is the absolute minimum. The security requirements of a voting system are radically different than most systems. A good summary of the problems and how to solve them is here: h
910.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Parsing long opts is trivial; just determine if the string exactly matches. E.g., "--version" only matches "--version". Short opts is what takes slightly more effort, because you have to accept both "-ld" and
911.
by dwheeler 7y ago
A big difference between Canada and the US is that in the US the "vote" is practically never for a single question, but for a much larger set of questions. You could still count by hand, but it takes longer. There are also more p
912.
by dwheeler 7y ago
> I'm so sick and tired of stories like this framing the issue of election security as a software issue or hardware issue. Election security is certainly more than software or hardware. But I'm sick and tired of jurisdictions t
913.
by dwheeler 7y ago
This seems to be primarily an argument that "CLIs should support GNU-style double-dash options". I agree with that argument, and in most cases it's easy to add support for them. Most option-processing systems support double
914.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I don't know if it's the fastest, but I've had good success using Puma with Ruby on Rails in a real-world production site. That said, if performance is your goal, then the web server is only a small part of it. In my experien
915.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Like most people, I'm going to keep using the word "homoiconic" because it is a useful term. The article just shows that if you insist on an absurdly strict definition you end up with nonsense. Even the "strings" b
916.
by dwheeler 7y ago
If this prediction turns out to be true, it would be a real boon for reducing carbon emissions. Changing from 7% to 40% of electrical generation is a big deal. I'm sure it's not enough, but it sounds like a start.
917.
by dwheeler 7y ago
"Fold" is not archaic, but it may be more common in some regions compared to others (see "pop" vs. "soda"). The "-fold" suffix is in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and it does NOT hav
918.
by dwheeler 7y ago
> frontier justice came for McElroy courtesy of the residents of Skidmore (population 440 at the time of the crime). Shaken by the man’s ability to evade jail even after being convicted of a near-fatal attack on a grocery store owner...
919.
by dwheeler 7y ago
It's true that you can screw up the use of make in multiple ways, but that is true of any programming system. I find make to be a useful tool. The most common mistake, by far, is trying to use make recursively (where make calls other
920.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Client-side JavaScript is sometimes a good idea, but it's absurd to think that all sites require it, and I think it's grossly overused. Most sites are mostly-static content. If your site is static, HTML and CSS are all you shoul
921.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I don't know what you mean by "second tier", it's a well-crafted compiler. It compiles extremely quickly, generally produces excellent binary code, and produces excellent error messages. For a brief discussion about its
922.
by dwheeler 7y ago
(Edit: I misread the original claim, my fault. So I'm fixing the text here.) I think it's important to look at authoritative documents, especially since copyright duration is absurdly complicated. You can learn more about copyrig
923.
by dwheeler 7y ago
+1 for "Starting FORTH". FORTH is very different from any other programming language (system), so creating a tutorial for it was especially challenging. Brodie did an amazing job of turning it into something clear. I don't
924.
by dwheeler 7y ago
Explicit nonsense is still nonsense. I don't believe that either Bayesian or frequentist approaches are the "one true way"; they are merely tools that help us understand the world, and both approaches have limitations. I
925.
by dwheeler 7y ago
The article says: > The main reason scientists have historically been resistant to using Bayesian inference instead is that they are afraid of being accused of subjectivity. The prior probabilities required for Bayes’ rule feel like an u
926.
by dwheeler 7y ago
This is a rediculous ahistorical argument. The Roman empire did not collapse right after Hadrian. Indeed, the next two emperors after Hadrian are often called "good emperors" (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius), and Rome was qui
927.
by dwheeler 7y ago
The "Z" notation is easy to explain, but I think it has practical problems. In particular, even trivial functions end up taking a very large number of lines. Here's the blog post example of "Take the first n elements o
928.
by dwheeler 7y ago
That looks a lot like sweet expressions, which have been implemented for both Common Lisp and Scheme. More info here: https://readable.sourceforge.io/
929.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I don't think this has anything to do with ITAR. It's a sanction that includes export restrictions, but it's a completely different law. I think the law you want to focus on is: CISADA (Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Account
930.
by dwheeler 7y ago
I had the same thought. I feel sorry for this individual, who is being hurt. However, his complaints make no sense. They're weird comments about "nuclear weapons" and "free" as if they had some relevance. Hint: t

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